We've officially come full circle as The Division 2 Battle for Brooklyn DLC finally launches today.
Long time fans of the series may know where I'm coming from with that statement. The first game began in the Brooklyn area of New York City before transplanting your agent into Manhattan.
With the second DLC for The Division 2, we're going back. Back to a place that, besides that initial introductory level, was originally teased as more of a thing when the game was getting its big reveal.
This is a paid expansion, as it should be, introducing a new story campaign to clear, a new map to explore, and 'new' enemies to fight. I say 'new' because they're familiar factions, but with a little added spice.
That we're here at all is impressive enough. For one, Battle for Brooklyn was originally slated to launch about a year ago.
Massive Entertainment took the decision to implement a significant delay, in order to spend time working on the core game, its systems, balancing and overall experience. Something necessary to set the game up for its now very prolonged life, heading towards the already confirmed sequel.
But, as I discussed in a recent chat with the team at Massive, The Division 2 was never originally planned to get this far. A year or so of new content was planned after the last expansion, 2020s Warlords of New York, and that was it.
With Massive also responsible for Avatar and Star Wars projects at Ubisoft, resources were to be shifted from The Division 2 over to those. But in a rare win for gamers, they listened to the players, saw the enduring popularity of the game, and reversed course.
In the time since, we've seen new modes such as Descent and Countdown added to the game, a revitalized and continuing story, and most recently, a complete rework of the seasonal model. And now, more than five years on from the last DLC, we have Battle for Brooklyn.
Besides the content in the expansion, Massive has also been working on the player onboarding experience. Despite entering its seventh year now, The Division 2 is still attracting new players.
That's about to get another boost as the game joins Xbox Game Pass on PC and console from today, also. While Battle for Brooklyn will still be an additional purchase, players on Game Pass will get access to everything else currently in the game, including the first expansion.
New players can also jump straight into Battle for Brooklyn if they wish, with a level 40 boost available to get a new character instantly up to scratch. Honestly, though, if you've never played before, take your time, play the campaigns in order, experience the whole thing.
The storyline of The Division 2 is pretty intense, and while new players will have missed out on the seasonal developments in recent years, it's still well worth playing through. But it does take time, and the option exists to skip and get straight into the new stuff means new players don't have to be left behind.
Battle for Brooklyn isn't a massive DLC, indeed, it's much smaller than Warlords of New York. The story is described as a "mini campaign" and there are only two new named zones.
But it's also only $15, and for a game that hasn't asked money off us for anything (outside of premium cosmetics and optional battle passes) in five years, I think that's more than fair.
It's set to go live, hopefully, sometime during May 27, however the downtime for the game was initially planned for 7 hours, which puts it firmly into the afternoon/early evening if you're in Europe.
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